Opinion | EU will recalibrate its stance on China across values, economic and strategic security
- Growing nationalism in China, hardening US-China competition and Beijing’s rise as a geopolitical force create uncomfortable dilemmas for the European Union
- The EU will treat China simultaneously as a partner, competitor and systemic rival, depending on the issue
How to handle China is a major political issue for the European Union, one that is more complex than dealing with Russia. Certainly, the EU’s political and economic systems have profound differences with both Russia and China. Unlike Russia, China is a real systemic actor, approaching 20 per cent of the world economy and growing, while Russia represents around 2 per cent and decreasing.
China’s economic, political and financial influence is considerable, and its military power continues to grow. Its ambition is clearly to build a new world order, with China at the centre, becoming by the middle of the century the world’s leading power.
The EU must be aware that many countries see China’s geopolitical influence as a counterweight to the West and therefore to Europe. And in a world that is becoming more fragmented and multipolar, most emerging countries are becoming hedgers, strengthening their room for manoeuvre without picking sides.
This is putting growing pressure on the EU and sometimes creating uncomfortable dilemmas. Europe was built on the idea of shared prosperity and today is a power of peace. So we do not want to block the rise of emerging nations, be it China, India or others. But logically we want to ensure that it does not harm our interests, threaten our values or jeopardise the international rules-based order.
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Last week we discussed EU-China relations with EU foreign ministers and agreed that there is no viable alternative to the triptych of treating China simultaneously as a partner, competitor and systemic rival, depending on the issue. But it is necessary to adjust the relative weights among these three items and this adjustment depends in large part on China’s own behaviour and the issue concerned.
